Im interested to know what the first 10 commercially available speccy games were... does anyone know, or have a link to somewhere that provides this kind of random info.
It would be impossible to say, as most of the historical information is only what was published in magazines at the time, and the fact that a program was reviewed or advertised isn't any proof of when, or if ever, it was released. I suspect that all of the first ten could be assigned to Sinclair Research, and that there were more than ten on sale in the shops or by mail order in the first month of commercially available Spectrum software, so picking the first ten would be impossible.
Given those provisos, a check of the 1982 reviews produces a quite short list. Most of them are from Sinclair Research, of course. Which were in the shops first is anybody's guess. There would be others whose advent at the time was not documented in the press, and it was into 1983 before the mags had covered all of even Sinclair's own early releases.
The new adverts index records much more early stuff, much of it "home-brewed" and only sold through small ads and thus not really qualifying as "commercially available", but that's not going to be finished for at least another year. There's a plethora of early small ads for Character Designer, Fruit Machine, Pacman & Star Trek programs.
Anyway, here's a short list, including some info from the partial adverts index. The earliest ads for Spectrum software appeared in July 1982. I've included reviews up to Dec'82, as some of those programs would have been available earlier; I've only checked ads up to Sep'82, excluding any obviously "home-brewed" software. All dates are when the programs appeared in the press, not when they were in the shops. I expect that the first ten are in this list somewhere.
Comments
Given those provisos, a check of the 1982 reviews produces a quite short list. Most of them are from Sinclair Research, of course. Which were in the shops first is anybody's guess. There would be others whose advent at the time was not documented in the press, and it was into 1983 before the mags had covered all of even Sinclair's own early releases.
The new adverts index records much more early stuff, much of it "home-brewed" and only sold through small ads and thus not really qualifying as "commercially available", but that's not going to be finished for at least another year. There's a plethora of early small ads for Character Designer, Fruit Machine, Pacman & Star Trek programs.
Anyway, here's a short list, including some info from the partial adverts index. The earliest ads for Spectrum software appeared in July 1982. I've included reviews up to Dec'82, as some of those programs would have been available earlier; I've only checked ads up to Sep'82, excluding any obviously "home-brewed" software. All dates are when the programs appeared in the press, not when they were in the shops. I expect that the first ten are in this list somewhere.
Jul'82
ADVENTURE 1, MAZEMAN (Abersoft)
ZX82 SPECTACULAR (aka. Spectrum Spectacular) (Automata)
Aug'82
3D MAZE OF GOLD, BEAR ISLAND / MONGOOSE, LIFE, MUNCHMAN, ZX-CESIL (Gilsoft)
DATABASE (Cadsoft)
ENGLISH 1, MATHS 1/2 (aka. Primary Maths 1/2) (Omega*Soft)
BERSERK, JEGA TAPE 1/2, SPEC-MAN (Jega Software)
SUPERVIEW, SUPERDRAW (Video Software)
USE AND LEARN (MiCROL)
VENTURE (G&J Bobker, aka. ZX-Guaranteed - also Dec'82)
Sep'82
WINGED AVENGER (Workforce)
Oct'82
FLIGHT SIMULATION, HORIZONS, SPACE RAIDERS, VU-CALC, VU-FILE (Sinclair Research)
GOLF (R&R Software)
METEOR STORM (Quicksilva)
NAVAL BLOCKADE (Hewson Consultants)
PHANTASMAGRAPHICS (Saxon Computing)
Nov'82
ESCAPE (New Generation Software)
FIGHTER PILOT, NIGHT GUNNER (Digital Integration)
FROGGY (DJL Software)
GREAT BRITAIN LTD (Simon W Hessel)
SPECTRUM CHESS, ZX ASSEMBLER (Artic Computing)
SPECTRUM MONITOR (Picturesque)
Dec'82
BIORHYTHMS, GAMES 1/2/3/4/5, GEOGRAPHY 1, HUNGRY HORACE, PASTIMES 1/2, PLANETOIDS / MISSILE (Sinclair Research)
CASH CONTROLLER (Richard Shepherd Software)
CASSETTE 1 (Silicon Software)
GAME TAPE 1 (Firefly)
LYNCHMOB (Bridge Software)
NIGHTFLITE (Hewson Consultants)
PELOPONNESIAN WAR, TYRANT OF ATHENS (MC Lothlorien)
SPACE INTRUDERS (Quicksilva)
SPDE (Campbell Systems)
SPEC BUG (Artic Computing)
SPECTRUM GAMES (Serious Software)
STAR TREK (R&R Software)
SUPER DEFLEX (Llamasoft)
VENTURE (ZX-Guaranteed)
ZX SPECTRUM GAMES (JRS Software)
I just tried a few of these games out on the emulator.
METEOR STRIKE has proper human speech in it! (a voice saying "meteor strike").
looked at LYNCH MOB as well, which is basically Hang-Man...lol